Ironman hypes Pro Series with new website and broadcast schedule

Ironman announced its new Pro Series at the Ironman World Championship in Kona last October, signalling that the company wasn’t going to sit idly by as the Professional Triathletes Organisation (PTO) sought to attract the sport’s biggest names to its own T100 Triathlon World Tour.

Ironman takes on the PTO with new Pro Series

With a US$1.7 million bonus pool, the 20-race Ironman Pro Series will offer almost $6 million in prize money. That’s not as much as the PTO is offering, but is still a welcome number for long-distance pro triathletes. Ironman is also offering money to the top 50 male and female athletes in the series – much deeper than the top-heavy PTO series, which richly rewards the 20 contracted men and women.

As a sign of how serious Ironman is about promoting the series and the 1,000 eligible professional athletes competing, the company has launched a new website – proseries.ironman.com – which will allow fans “to stay up to date with news and previews in-between races, (provide) dedicated bio pages for professional triathletes racing in an Ironman Pro Series event in 2024, as well as individual race results, and overall Series standings.”

How does the Ironman Pro Series work?

The series includes 20 races. There are six full-distance Ironman races and 10 70.3 races in the series, along with the two-day Ironman and Ironman 70.3 World Championship events.

Here’s how Ironman explains the scoring system:

The Ironman Pro Series is a points-based system based on an athlete’s finish time in relation to the event winner, calculated after the completion of each designated series race. Winners at Ironman events will earn 5,000 points while winners of Ironman 70.3 events will earn 2,500 points. In each scenario, points continue to decrease as the race time increases, until the points reach zero. Elevated points are available at the Ironman World Championship (6,000 for champion), and the Ironman 70.3 World Championship (3,000 points for champion). Only the top five points results for a competitor count towards final rankings, of which a maximum of three Ironman results can be counted. The male and female pro with the most points at the end of the Series will be crowned Ironman Pro Series Champion. The inaugural race of the Ironman Pro Series will kick off at the Ironman 70.3 Oceanside event on Saturday, April 6, 2024. Standings and individual race results can be found on the new Ironman Pro Series website.

Broadcast Schedule

All of the events in the Ironman Pro Series will be broadcast live. In Canada and the United States the broadcast will be available on Outside TV and, for international audiences, “across multiple platforms, including proseries.ironman.com, DAZN, and L’Equipe in France.”

According to a release from Ironman, “The live broadcasts will be hosted by a team of the sport’s greats, including Ironman world champions and Hall of Famers Greg Welch and Michellie Jones, as well as three time Ironman world champion Mirinda Carfrae, Ironman champions Dede Griesbauer and Michael Lovato, and professional Ironman athlete Laura Siddall. Matt Lieto will also be providing analysis from both on the course and in the studio throughout the 2024 season.”

2024 Ironman Pro Series Schedule
Date	Event	Location
Apr 6	Athletic Brewing Ironman 70.3 Oceanside	Oceanside, Calif., USA
Apr 27	Memorial Hermann Ironman North American Championship Texas	The Woodlands, Texas, USA
May 4	Intermountain Health Ironman 70.3 North American Championship St. George	St. George, Utah, USA
May 11	Zafiro Ironman 70.3 Alcúdia, Mallorca	Alcúdia, Mallorca, Spain
May 19	Qatar Airways Ironman 70.3 Chattanooga	Chattanooga, Tenn., USA
June 2	Ironman European Championship Hamburg (FPRO)	Hamburg, Germany
June 8	Ironman 70.3 Boulder	Boulder, Colo., USA
June 16	Cairns Airport Ironman Cairns	Cairns, Queensland, Australia
June 23	Ironman 70.3 Mont-Tremblant	Mont-Tremblant, Quebec, Canada
June 30	Ironman 70.3 Les Sables d’Olonne	Vendėe, France
July 14	Ironman Vitoria-Gasteiz	Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain
July 21	Athletic Brewing Ironman Lake Placid	Lake Placid, N.Y., USA
Aug. 18	Mainova Ironman European Championship Frankfurt (MPRO)	Frankfurt, Germany
Aug. 25	Ironman 70.3 European Championship Tallinn	Tallinn, Estonia
Sept. 1	Ironman 70.3 Zell am See-Kaprun	Zell am See, Austria
Sept. 22	VinFast Ironman World Championship – Women’s Race	Nice, France
Oct. 26	VinFast Ironman World Championship – Men’s Race	Kona, Hawai`i, USA
Dec. 1	Ironman 70.3 Western Australia	Busselton, Western Australia
Dec. 14 & 15	VinFast Ironman 70.3 World Championship	Taupō, New Zealand

Huge field for Ironman 70.3 Oceanside

If the entry list for the first race of the series is any indication, pro athletes are keen to participate in the series. Over 120 pro athletes have signed up for the race in Oceanside, including a number of athletes who have signed PTO contracts who are skipping the T100 event in Singapore the following weekend – including defending champion Tamara Jewett (CAN), Taylor Knibb (USA), Paula Findlay (CAN) and Emma Pallant-Browne (GBR). The men’s field includes T100 Miami runner-up Sam Long (USA), who is also on the T100 Singapore start list, two-time Ironman world champion Patrick Lange, Canadian Jackson Laundry (2022 Oceanside champ and third last year) and his countryman Lionel Sanders, Great Britain’s Joe Skipper, New Zealand’s Braden Currie and Belgium’s Jelle Geens – to name just a few.

Ironman 70.3 Oceanside features many T100 athletes who are skipping Singapore (and one who is not!)

Thanks to the new T100 Triathlon World Tour and the Ironman Pro Series, there’s never been a better time to be a long-distance professional triathlete, with over US$13 million in prize money and bonuses up for grabs in 2024. It should make for an interesting year to be a triathlon fan.